The documentary “Sohrab, A Journey”, on the life of one of the most influential directors and pioneers of the modern Iranian cinema Sohrab Shahid-Saless (1944-1998) will be screened in selected cinemas next week.
It will be launched in a ceremony on June 26 at the Cinema Museum in Tehran on the occasion of Shahid-Saless’s birth anniversary (June 28).
Directed by Omid Abdollahi, the movie is a production of the Documentary and Experimental Film Center.
According to ISNA, the film was premiered at the 10th edition of Cinema Verite, Iran International Documentary Film Festival, in 2016.
At the inauguration ceremony cinematic figures will give talks on the deceased auteur, while the cast and crew of the documentary will explain the film’s production process.
Shahid-Saless is considered as one of the most celebrated figures in Iranian cinema in the 20th century. In 1963, he left Iran for Vienna, where he attended a film school and an acting school at the same time. His studies discontinued in 1967 due to a sudden diagnosis of tuberculosis.
In the midst of his medical treatment, he left for Paris to continue his film studies at the prestigious Independent Conservatory of French Cinema, and shortly after, in 1968, he returned to Iran.
In Tehran Shahid-Saless started work with the Iranian Ministry of Culture as a documentary filmmaker, where he produced multiple short films and documentaries, partly on the topic of traditional dance among different Iranian ethnic groups, Iranicaonline.org wrote.
In the course of his stay in Iran (1968–74), he produced two major feature films, “A Simple Event” (1973) and “Still Life” (1974). Both won major international awards for their realistic depiction of social life in Iran and for their innovative cinematographic and experimental style.
With “A Simple Event” Shahid-Saless emerged on the scene as a filmmaker with a distinctive style. Adopting an almost documentary style, he recorded uneventful moments in the lives of ordinary people.
He once said, “A Simple Event has no plot. It is only a report on the daily life of a boy”. Working with a cast of non-professional local players, the director made his film with realistic images that almost correspond with the flow of rural life.
In 1976 he went to Germany where his TV productions always had a distinguished artistic quality. He made his last movie, “Roses for Africa” in 1991 for German television. In 1992, he left Germany for the US to join his family. There, he died from a chronic illness related to a liver condition from which he suffered for a long period.
Shahid-Saless’s works, in his own words, intend to document the “antagonism between man and society”.
